A part time stay home dad enjoying (nearly) every minute of it…

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I’m a day late on this one. Think of it as the Christmas gift that was forgotten about, lost under the tree. Or the one that arrives late in the mail. Or the one you had to buy yourself.

Anyway…

Whether you call it zee or zed it is for the end. It is the end of the alphabet. The Omega. It’s over. This is the last post in this year’s A to Z Challenge. Like all good things, this too must end.

Z is for the end of the day. The bedtime routine is painful, but once the kidlets are tucked in for reading time it’s one of my favorite times of the day. It’s quiet. It’s just us. We’re doing something we all enjoy that doesn’t involve running, jumping, screaming, hiding, or screens. Books are our portal to other worlds, other lives, and other times. Crash is reading the third book of Chris Colfer’s Land of Stories. He’s really enjoying them, even if he says he’s at slow part and nothing’s happening. Bang is really into the Puppy Place books by Ellen Miles. Just like days end, so too do books.

Sometimes we read a book and it’s ending makes feel like our bestie just moved away. Opening the book was like a visit from a friend. Like the world’s longest status update, we want to know what our friends are doing. We never want to get to Z, we never want it to end. It does, though, so we move on and find new friends in new books. For me that book was The Book Theif by Markus Zusak. Liesel and Rudy became a part of my every day for a while.

Days end. Books end. Lives end. Concerts end no matter how many times you chant “one more song”. So we start over. A fresh start, so to speak. We pick up the pieces and we move on. A new day is full of opportunities. Let’s make the most of it and dance!

You’re sitting the front car, a dozen more are behind you. All is quiet except the familiar click click click of a chain slowly pulling your coaster to the top of a very high hill. For just a split second you hang motionless staring down the near vertical drop. Then the chain lets go…

According to crosswordsolver.org there are 22,046 words that start with the letter P. This is exact number of time I’ve told the boys to clean up their toys in the basement.

The possibilities are endless.

This is a house of mostly boys. Therefore, P could be for penis, pee pee, pisser, or pecker. I’ll refrain from talking about our private parts.

This space is generally about being a dad. Hence,

will be for parenthood. One of life’s greatest accomplishments is to raise self-sufficient, happy, healthy, educated offspring. There is also nothing else more frustrating. Except for maybe that last piece of leftover pizza disappearing from the fridge.

Are we ever prepared for this journey? Oh sure, we buy the book about what to expect. That’s like me describing what the roller coaster The Super Duper Looper felt like. Until you ride it for yourself, you’ll never really understand that first drop and the feeling of your stomach in your throat. Isn’t that kinda what parenting feels like? You climb that hill, anxiously waiting for the ride to really begin just as mom’s belly grows and grows (you might even call her your punch buggy). Suddenly, life is flashing by at 65 mph and the best you can do hang on and scream. But, my God, it’s fun!

Like I wrote in Life Before and After Kids, our lives change drastically. No longer can we do what we want when we want how want where we want. We suddenly have this little ball of squishy, adorable, Jell-O tagging along.

I always thought I’d be a parent like Ms. Honey from Matilda, was a teacher. I would kindly ask in my sweetest voice for something to be done and the kids would scurry to get it done. They would answer my questions in complete sentences and dazzle me with their brilliance. Turns out my parenting style feels more like Ms. Trunchbull.

So whether you have 1 kid or, like Mr. and Mrs. Vassilyev you have 69 children, do what you gotta do to get it done. Books, TV, other parents, non-parents, and “experts” will try to tell you the best way to do it. Sometimes they’ll be right. Sometimes they won’t. Sometimes you’ll get it right, sometimes you won’t.